I don't want to think I just want to sink
by Lora Perry
Summary: Tangled bed sheets. Fiery hair that isn't diluted by sun or wind or time. Desperation. Salvation. It's who they are. Satan and Evil Spawn. Broken hearts. The club of the misused and put away wet.


It's bare thread sheets and rotten smells and bed springs that squeak. It's fiery hair that isn't diluted by sun or wind or time. It's the way his nails scratch against her back. It's the whispered moan of his name that parts past her cupid lips, before he silences her with a rough kiss.

It's the memory that they were never supposed to be anything. That they were both once married in churches.

(to other people)

It's anger. It's rage. It's passion and beauty and literary allusions from books they both skimmed through too busy being alive. It's an intoxicating rush when she arches her back and he gasps in pleasure.

It's them. It's who they are. Satan and Evil Spawn. Broken hearts. The club of the misused and put away wet.

They meet, in a rundown motel—

(he calls her, gasping for breath, says he needs to get away, says the worst has happened, says he can never go back).

She wears sunglasses that reflect back at him the way the sand dunes all around glint in the unforgiving oppressing heat. He doesn't say a word to her- simply grabs her by the waist and pulls her in for a kiss

(breathe for me, he could say, but language has always been to high context for him to truly understand).

She doesn't ask anything at all until later, when the sheets are drenched in sweat and her body aches from all his pain. She thinks of what "W" word to use, who what why when how, but settles instead to kiss the left side of his neck, stubble growing in unevenly, while simply saying, "better?"

He doesn't respond, lost somewhere she doesn't dare or want to follow him to.

They meet in a hotel in San Francisco—

(she calls him, barely getting out four words before his keys are in hand and he's out the door, coming to her, to heal her, to break her, to find her and empty her)

He arrives in a whirl of fear for her. Grabs her and holds her and won't let go. His eyes search her over, looking for anything, and finding nothing, kisses every part of her.

(don't forgot to breath. Don't forgot to breathe.)

His hands are rough on the inside of her thigh, new scars that mingle with the old ones down his back from before her, before them all. She dances around the room in his t-shirt, avoiding any topic other than 80's music and where they were when the shuttle caressed itself in flames—the hopes and dreams of their generation there interred.

They talk of other's devastation to not talk of their own. The night betrays them, and turns to a pink seashell dawn. They take a blanket to a beach that, in the dead of winter, is peacefully empty at daybreak. She giggles like a school girl as he gently unties the knot that holds her top on; tracing the fabric against her back before tossing it aside into the cold sand.

The sand gets everywhere and it's not as nearly romantic as all the movies make it seem, but for them two, it's another escape, another day that the world isn't asking for them to pay. She goes for bagels and he calls reality to assure them he's alive.

They meet in Iowa—

(he calls and says he can't do this; can't do it; can't breathe; can't think; and what does it all mean?)

He looks ten years older and so much like a little boy in the same moment it stills her heart. His heart and his eyes and his soul have crumbled far too many times she worries even with super glue she won't be able to fix it all this time.

He holds a picture from his childhood, two teenage boys holding a tiny girl outside a carnival. It's torn and faded, and the smile on the eldest boys face she's never seen.

(it's not your fault this time. It was never you fault. Breathe)

She holds his hand as he cries in a hotel room twenty miles from his home town because it's far too toxic for him to get any closer. She takes him to bed and holds him close and reminds him in the only way she'd ever tell him that there's at least one person there with him. Their love that night is filled with an anger and anguish that she finds hard to control. He contorts away from her, tries to burrow inside himself but she won't let him.

She traces the scar on his chest. The one that pulses with life, with spite, with the taunt that he's just as human as the rest of them. She sleeps with her hand against it.

They break promises to each other repeatedly. He falls in love with a girl, she falls in love too. Sometimes they miss each other's calls and sometimes they ignore them. They try to move on because they were never meant to be each other's net. They were meant to be anything but.

And then there's an accident. And then there are babies that only she can save. And then there are babies that only he can help her save. And then there are hands that touch as they work together as miracle makers and breakers.

In on call rooms they lie next to one another but don't touch. Talk of where they are, who they've loved who they've lost. She absently picks at her fingernails while watching his Adams apple move up and down.

(she knows that if either of them tried they could make it work. That they've both become the best, both strong where the other is weak. They could go anywhere together and live.)

She lays a hand on his chest, looks him straight in the eye and loses her nerve.

(they've danced this number before, she always forgets the second verse and the melody is never one he can hum real well)

Written for Fandomaid over at livejournal, which is a great cause helping raise money to help those affected by natural disasters.


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